The Bilt Palladium Card Looks Too Complicated But It’s The Best Everyday Rewards Card

I receive compensation for content and many links on this blog. Be aware that websites may earn compensation when a customer clicks on a link, when an application is approved, or when an account is opened. Citibank is an advertising partner of this site, as is American Express, Chase, Capital One, and others. Any opinions expressed in this post are my own, and have not been reviewed, approved, or endorsed by my advertising partners. I do not write about all offers that are available -- instead focusing on miles, points, and cash back (and currencies that can be converted into the same). Terms apply to the offers and benefits listed on this page.The Bilt Palladium Card (See rates and fees) has gotten a lot of attention since it went live earlier this year. It is still underrated. That’s because people complain that it’s too complicated. But it’s only complicated if you choose to really maximize it. Even at its most simple, it’s a better general spending card for rewards than anything else on the market. It has the potential to be a 4x on everything card, but you could ignore every feature the card has and just treat it as ‘2x on everything’ And you’d still be earning the most valuable points, with the best transfer partners. Plus, Bilt Rewards has the biggest transfer bonuses, often up to 100%. But you can do much, much better than that. Here are the card basics. This is $495 annual fee card. It can will earn up to 1.25X points on rent and mortgage payments with no transaction fee. And it earns 2X points on everyday spend. The initial bonus offer is 50,000 Bilt Points + Gold Status after spending $4,000 on everyday purchases in the first 90 days + $300 of Bilt Cash. Benefits include a $400 Bilt Travel Hotel credit. Applied twice a year, as $200 statement credits, for qualifying Bilt Travel Portal hotel bookings. You also receive $200 Bilt Cash (awarded annually). At the end of each calendar year, any Bilt Cash balance over $100 will expire. Priority Pass ($469/year value). (See Guide to Benefits.) You can spend your Bilt Points at 1.25 cents apiece towards travel through their portal, or transfer them to their partners. Star Alliance: Air Canada Aeroplan, Turkish Miles & Smiles, United Airlines MileagePlus, Avianca LifeMiles, TAP Air Portugal Miles&Go oneworld: Cathay Pacific Asia Miles, Alaska Airlines Mileage Plan, Iberia Plus, British Airways Club, Japan Airlines Mileage Bank, Qatar Airways Privilege Club SkyTeam: Air France KLM Flying Blue, Virgin Atlantic Flying Club Non-alliance: Emirates Skywards, Southwest Airlines, Aer Lingus Aer Club Hotels: World Of Hyatt, IHG One Rewards, Marriott Bonvoy, Hilton Honors, Accor ALL – Accor Live Limitless, Wyndham Rewardsm, Preferred Hotels I Prefer My question at this point, though, is why don’t more people understand this? [Bilt] Palladium Cardholder here – i think this is the best card on the market. Obvious reasons below – Can pay rent/mortgage – 3.3x catch all – 3x minimum – Access to wide variety of Transfer Partners – BILT CASH is underrated (factoring in the ability to get better value when you transfer points on rent day) Note on the points – I’m quite surprised how quickly the points accumulate with Bilt. If you value points and transfer partners and getting maximum value for your points – this is it I know that there was a lot of frustration and confusion at card launch. They were transitioning from away from Wells Fargo and moving from one card to three cards on a very compressed timeline. You can choose to earn 4% back in Bilt Cash on top of your points for spending with this card, but when they launched they didn’t have a list of what you could actually do with the Bilt Cash or the terms for each of the things you might redem for. That took another week. Plus, many older cardmembers didn’t like losing the ability to make 5 $1 purchases a month (and nothing else) and earn 1 point per dollar spent charging rent. That was a money-losing formula and Bilt changed it with the new cards, and those for whom the new products were no longer useful were not at all happy. And while everything went pretty smoothly for me, a few readers had difficulty making rent and mortgage payments with the card. You can earn additional points for housing payments, but you have to be able to rely on Bilt to process those. There were some early hiccups that seem to have been resolved. Frequent Miler has a good podcast on this. Their view was that the card’s rollout problems have settled into normal ‘background noise’. Greg Davis-Kean says complaints have “slowed down considerably” and now feel more like the ordinary complaints they hear about Chase or other issuers. Nick Reyes agreed that it no longer seems like a widespread problem: “I think it’s slowed to more of that type of thing with Bilt… it’s not the norm that people are having problems with. It’s more the norm that people are in better shape with it these days. They haven’t used the card for housing payments, but still use it to earn 3 points per dollar spent. They redeem Bilt Cash for ‘points accelerator’ where $200 in Bilt Cash lets you earn an extra 1 point per dollar spent for the next $5,000 in spend. When you’re opted into earning Bilt Cash, that $5,000 spend earns another $200 in Bilt Cash, which pays for your next accelerator. You can redeem Points Accelerators as a Gold or Platinum member 5 times per year, and when you earn the card’s initial bonus that boosts you to a year of Gold status. (And if you max out your points accelerators, you’ve done enough spend on the card to re-earn Gold without any other activity through Bilt.) Greg doesn’t just use Palladium as his catch-all (the card for spending where other cards don’t earn bonus points) but sometimes even where other cards earn 3x too. I’ve been using the Palladium card as my everywhere else card lately… when I’m not earning 3x or more with some other card, I use the Bilt Palladium… I think you can make a good argument that why not use it even when other things are 3x because it averages somewhere in that neighborhood. Nick does what I do: “This has become the ultimate player two card… my wife uses this and only this… I don’t care if it’s dining or grocery or whatever. It’s going to be three points per dollar.” With Bilt Palladium, you don’t need to give your spouse or partner a stack of cards with instructions on what to use each one for. My wife still uses Amex Gold for groceries and restaurants at 4x. But she’s down to actually using just two cards, which she appreciates. She has an authorized user card on my account. That costs $95 and comes with another Priority Pass card. Perhaps the real reason why they charge is that an authorized user can generate another 5 Points Accelerators if they’re Gold or above. You can choose to credit the points and Bilt Cash from their spend to their account instead of the primary cardmember’s. They get their own monthly Rent Day bonus on card spend and it’s a way of doubling the Points Accelerator cap. “This is really interesting now that I think about it because… if you’re doing your spend at 3x… $33,333 gets you about the 100,000 points that you could transfer. And if you get an additional 25% bump by buying up to the next level [of transfer bonus], you get an additional 25,000 points. That’s almost an additional built point for every dollar that you’ve spent… it’s essentially like almost getting 4x on that spend. What he’s saying is: Earn 100,000 Bilt Points Take advantage of a Rent Day transfer bonus when offered, using Bilt Cash to bump the bonus an additional 25%. Say the bonus then is 125%. You’d net 225,000 points with their partner. And that’s doable with $33,333 spend, which is 6.75 points per dollar spent. I’ve taken advantage of transfer bonuses to Japan Airlines, British Airways, Hawaiian Airlines (since merged with Alaska), Virgin Atlantic and Air France KLM. I pay my mortgage with no fee through Bilt and haven’t had any issues. I redeem Bilt Cash so that I earn 1 point per dollar of that payment. There’s no cap, and you can pay mortgage or rent for others too to earn points. But neither Nick nor Greg are making housing payments using Bilt and still lean heavily into the card. The early rollout back in January and February was rocky, and even though things smoothed out that’s a reasonable choice for folks to make. But my own view is that the points are simply so valuable you’re leaving too much on the table if you don’t lean into this program. Bilt Palladium Card Topics on this page Editorial note: any opinions, analyses, reviews or recommendations expressed in this article are those of the author’s alone, and have not been reviewed, approved or otherwise endorsed by any card issuer. Comments made in response to this post are not provided or commissioned nor have they been reviewed, approved, or otherwise endorsed by any bank. It is not the responsibility of advertisers Citibank, Chase, American Express, Barclays, Capital One or any other advertiser to ensure that questions are answered, either. Terms and limitations apply to all offers.